Ok, this was only the basic idea to write APing beside the
four
probe types you can also change the ToS (Type of service)
value in packets, retrieve the UTC time from a valid timestamp reply
packet, or to change the TTL (time to live field), even to trace
the
sent packets to understand better what's going on. The latter
implementations (ToS setup, UTC time retrieval . . .) are available in the alpha
4, beta 1 development versions only.

Why created APing ?
I
have wrote APing from three major reasons. First of all I like to scan
networks/hosts, to detect the operating system, server version, to see
how routers, hosts responses to different packets with different
options, to scout new things in that field. I'm using Nmap, Wireshark, the usual ping program, tcpdump
. . ., but I have found no probing/scanning program that can make
more then two, three ICMP probes. So I have thought I gonna write my
own host discovery, network probing program.
The second reason is
that I like to code, and I feel funny when a day elapsed without
coding at least a few lines :)
The third reason is the free software, open source community. Without this community GNU, Linux
and all the free, open source programs would not be what they are. And
I must to thank all the great stuff that this can offer to me. For
instance I started to program after I installed GNU/Linux. So this is
my aknowledgement, to write a program that is free.